Wieviel Moderne verträgt Die Provinz? Überlegungen zur Moderne als Literatur- und Subjektform in der Karlsbader Zeitschrift Die Provinz (1924)
How Much Modernity Can the Province Take? Reflections on Modernity as a Literary and Subject Form in the Karlovy Vary Journal Die Provinz (1924)

Summary/Abstract: This paper analyses the significance of the concepts of province and modernity in the journal Die Provinz (1924). This “modern revue” (as one of the self‑ advertisements puts it), intended primarily for (German‑ speaking) Czechoslovakia (subtitle: Semimonthly for Czechoslovakia) and published by two social‑ democratically minded intellectuals close to the artistic avant‑ garde (Ernst Sommer, Bruno Adler/Urban Roedl), pursues above all an educational purpose: the ‘province’ which it addresses is emphasised as the actual sphere of the ‘human’, but with the portent of the utopian. Its modern features consist above all in the socialisation or solidarisation of the political perspective, which is directed against (national, regional, cultural) particularisms. Post‑ bourgeois views of the subject, for example in the sense of the cold persona of the New Objectivity (Lethen) or the socialist collective subject, or post‑ bourgeois views of literature in the sense of a break with tradition or an opening to avant‑ gardes, however, cannot be attested to the journal. The journal thus illustrates a specific hybrid of bourgeois and post‑ bourgeois modernity.

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